Puschkin. Before we get to this episode, I want to recommend another podcast for you.
Fiasco, Aran Contra is another Puschkin podcast by the co -creator of Slowburn, Leon Nayfack.
You'll learn how Ronald Reagan found himself in the middle of a scandal that looked like it just might take down his presidency.
Fiasco or on Contra is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Don't miss it. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Behind every successful business is a vision.
Bringing it to life takes more than effort.
It takes the right financial foundation and support.
That's where Chase for Business comes in.
With convenient digital tools, helpful resources, and personalized guidance, they can help your business forge ahead confidently.
Learn more at chase .com backslash business chase for business.
Make more of what's yours.
The chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices.
Message and data rates may apply.
JP Morgan, Chase bank, and a member FDIC copyright 2025, JP Morgan, chase and company.
Lights camera, innovation.
Walt Disney studios chose advanced 5g solutions from T -Mobile for business to transform the moviemaking process.
Together, they kept a remote production hub in Hawaii in sync with a team in California to bring Lilo and Stitch to theaters this summer.
This is picture perfect collaboration.
This is Walt Disney Studios with T -Mobile for Business.
Take your business further at tmobile .com slash now.
The last thing you want to do when you're sick is go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription Because then you're standing in a long line with a whole bunch of sick people.
And everyone is sick of being sick around other people who are sick.
Amazon pharmacy will deliver right to you fast. So you can get meds without congregating among the contagious.
Healthcare just got less painful.
Amazon pharmacy. Hello, hello.
Malcolm Gladwell here.
Today I'm in the studio with my producer, Lucy Sullivan.
Lucy. Hi Malcom. I understand you have a story for me about a particular misunderstanding.
That is true. We're here cause I want to tell you about something I'm calling The Missy Incident.
It totally changed the way that I think about something foundational and it also reminded me of you.
Of me. Of you. Oh my god.
Um okay. So it all happened at this coffee shop that I go to all the time.
Can you tell me what the name of the coffee shop is?
Malcolm, I can tell you the name of the coffee shop off -mic, but my fellow cafe goers did not want me to name it on this podcast because it's that good.
Oh, it's that good.
Yeah, it's so good, and it's the kind of place that's always packed, so you have to be comfortable sitting with a stranger if you want to get a seat, and that's where this all starts.
So the person at the center of this, her name is Missy Kurzweil.
She was fresh off of maternity leave with her second kid when the incident happened.
I think one of the things that happens when you have a baby and are on maternity leave is you lose a bit of your identity and yourself.
You're spending all your time with a newborn who can't talk back to you.
And so I was sort of just navigating that transition and wanting human interaction.
So Missy is looking for a place to work outside of her home office and she finds this coffee shop.
On her third morning, kind of feeling out this place, is this where she wants to set up camp for her HQ?
you. She sits down at this table, and in walks this guy, and he's like, hey, you mind if I sit here?
She says, sure. This is JJ Goode.
So, JJ and Missy is sitting down together.
What happens? Missy's on the phone with their kids' pediatrician, and JJ is sitting there eavesdropping, and the doctor asks for what's the patient's name, and Missy says, oh, his name's Remy.
JJ freaked out. Because he was like, you have a Remy?
Because I have a Remy.
Then, of course, we were off to the races.
Turns out they both have cats named Sunny, they both are freelancers.
He's a cookbook writer, she's also a writer.
So for me there it was like on many levels was just really kind of a special bond instantly and I don't know if this is normal for you but like I don't usually I'm not usually chatting it up with people at the coffee shop.
But these two and there's nothing romantic going on here.
Nothing romantic. Yeah.
Strictly friends who are just like wow we have so which in common. I think no matter where you're at in your life, meeting someone like JJ feels unusual, because he's just so open and so seemingly genuinely interested in what you have to say and what are all these details about your life.
So Missy is excited.
She goes home and she tells her husband, oh my gosh, I've met this great friend and I found this great coffee shop to work like things couldn't be better.
And so for the next few days, Missy and JJ sit together, work together, crucially, always at the same spot in the front.
But one day she comes in and their usual table is taken.
So she just heads to a different one in the back.
And maybe an hour after I sat down, I see J .J.
kind of walk to the back and he's looking around seemingly for a table.
And we make direct eye contact.
And I start to say, hey, J .J., but he looks at me and sort of kind of registers it and turns around and walks the other way.
He ghosts her. He ghosts her.
She was like, we made eye contact.
I was like, maybe he didn't see me, but no. He saw me, our eyes locked.
I went to wave. He turned around.
So now Missy's like, what is going on here?
She had just met his wife a couple of days before and she's like, maybe the wife wasn't comfortable, with like, or maybe she's thinking something's going on?
Maybe I said something weird to him?
Like, she's really like spinning her wheels.
She's reeling, she's reeling.
And I went back the next day, I sat in the back and the same thing happened where he walks by, sort of sees me seemingly like, we make eye contact.
And this time I think I probably was a little bit more reserved because of what had happened the day before.
And he turns around and walks the other way again.
And now I'm like, okay, I think I might have said something that offended him.
My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
And since we're talking about misunderstandings, whatever you think is going on in this story right now, I promise you, you've got it wrong.
So, Missy is obviously super bummed about this.
You know, I mean, listen, I've been with my husband for a long time, so I haven't been on the dating scene, but it definitely had an equivalent like, you put yourself out there and you think that you're connecting to someone, but they're not experiencing that same thing.
She considered trying to find a new place to work, but like I said, the coffee shop is just too good, and so after a few days, she decides, you know what, I'm just gonna I'm going to ignore the weirdness." And this time their usual spot in the front is open.
So she sits down and then right on cue, J .J.
walks in. And he sees me and his face lights up and he's like, Missy, you haven't been here in like a week or two.
I've missed you, where have you been?
And then he sits down and he's chit chatting and he's catching up and he's asking questions just like nothing.
No time passed. Like nothing happened.
Like absolutely nothing happened.
And I was so confused.
And I did not know what to make of that, but I was kind of just relieved that the the freezeout was over and so I just went with it and I was like, Oh, you know, good to see you again.
And I just sort of picked up where we left off.
And I didn't say anything.
And it wasn't too long after that, that she discovered what was really going on and why it seemed like this new friend was just totally ignoring her.
I'm sitting at a table with JJ.
and a woman walks in, super friendly, comes over to JJ and says, hey JJ, and I think goes to give him a hug and asks him questions about how his kids are.
Their conversation lasts just a few minutes and then she walks away to get a coffee and he looks at me and he goes, I don't know who that is.
And I was like, what?
You seemed like you were friends with her.
And he was like, I have this face blindness thing, it gives me a lot of anxiety because I'm probably supposed to know her.
And then I think I paused and I said something like, is that why you broke up with me six months ago?
And this is the part that made me think of you, Malcolm, face blindness because I've heard that you also might be a little face blind yourself.
Yes, yes, that's true.
This happens to me all the time.
I won't remember if I need to be exposed to a face, a person on multiple occasions before their face becomes meaningful, or even their, I don't know whether their face is becoming meaningful or that I'm developing so many other ways of recognizing them that I feel on safer ground.
You're not just gonna remember someone that you've met once or twice in passing.
No, there's no chance that I will.
I had, it's actually funny, because I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop And I see there's a guy who runs the wine shop across the street.
His name is Michael.
I know Michael for years and I see Michael or I think it's Michael.
And I see a London man in his 50s about five, nine with glasses and a baseball cap across the street from the wine shop and I think, oh, that's got to be Michael.
And I go, Michael. And the guy looks at me like really weird and it was like my nightmare.
It's like, oh, my God.
There's just another dude who's in town who looks a lot like Michael.
But that was my system failed.
It's very rare for me to risk it like that, but I risked it because I thought if Michael thinks...
I had the reverse JJ.
If Michael thinks I'm ignoring him, then that's really bad, because I go to the wine shop all the time and I like Michael.
See, it's interesting because this never happens to me.
I'm often on the other side of it being, like, all right, I'm just going to pretend like I don't know this person.
You always remember.
I always remember. And I always remember people who are completely insignificant to me, like not in any sort of value judgment way.
It's just like, oh I met you once at my friend's party four years ago and now you are standing next to me in line at Target.
That's so, completely foreign.
And this is why actually Malcolm, to be honest, when I had first heard, cause I think I heard from someone in passing before we started working together, oh Malcolm, he's face blind, he has trouble recognizing people, and I was like, okay.
Like yeah, he's face blind like because I was thinking like, I've never forgotten.
I just don't forget people's faces.
So I was like if I were you and I was meeting a million people all the time and people were recognizing me from book covers, that would be kind of a disorienting experience.
And it would be kinda nice to have an excuse.
Like, oh, I don't remember you because I'm like face blind or whatever.
But I just couldn't believe that that was true until I heard the story.
Yeah, no, no I do. And it makes me feel bad because we're in it.
I feel for JJ because you're in this constant state of worry about that you're going to be perceived as cold or aloof and you're not.
Yeah, and so this perception problem is exactly what fascinates me about face blindness, which I've now spent way too many hours learning about after hearing this story of Missy and JJ.
Because I've always thought that being able to recognize someone was about having a good or a bad memory, whatever that means?
Yeah. Or just frankly caring enough to remember them.
Like, you worry that you might be perceived as cold or aloof if you don't say hi to Michael.
Or Missy thought her new friend was ignoring her.
I seem to remember way more faces than I want to.
I really wanted to understand what's actually going on in our brains when all this happens.
After the break, Lucy Sullivan takes us behind the face and into the brain.
odds boost token. Then place a bet on any MLB game and activate your token.
If you're boost at bet hits you'll score a bigger payout.
No matter the showdown bet MGM is your betting home for baseball.
Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission.
Bet MGM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly.
See BetMGM .com for terms 21+.
This U .S. promo offer not available in Mississippi, New York, Nevada, Ontario or Puerto Rico.
Gambling problem? Call 1 -800 -GAMBLER, available in the U .S. For New York, call 877 -8HOPE -NY or text HOPENY467369.
For Arizona, call 1 -800 -NEXT -STEP.
For Massachusetts, call 1 -800 -327 -5050.
For Iowa, call 1 -800 -BETS -OFF.
For Puerto Rico, call 1 -800 -981 -0023.
Subject to eligibility requirements, rewards may vary and expire in one to seven days in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel.
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.
Just ask the Capital One bank guy.
It's pretty much all he talks about – in a good way.
He'd also tell you this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.
Aw really – thanks Capital One bank guy.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply. See CapitalOne .com slash BANK Capital One N A Member FDIC.
It's that time of year again.
The time I like to ask, how's that New Year's resolution working out?
Are you drinking less, exercising more, eating better?
If you're like most people, the answers are no, no, and no, because research shows that 90 % of Americans break their resolutions usually within two weeks.
But did you know that in ancient cultures, the vernal equinox was considered the New Year, which means you have a second chance to make a resolution.
And there's one in particular that can improve your health, your mood and your energy level.
You just need to commit to better sleep.
That's right, better sleep has been scientifically linked to a better you, which is precisely why you need a SATVA luxury mattress.
Every SATVA is meticulously handcrafted to gently lull you to sleep and keep you sleeping soundly.
It's no wonder they were named the best overall mattress by sleepfoundation .org.
So commit yourself to getting a better night's sleep.
And if you really want to keep that commitment, get a Saatva and now save $200 on $1 ,000 or more at Saatva .com slash Gladwell.
That's S -A -A -T -V -A .com slash Gladwell.
JJ Good, Missy's friend from the coffee shop, doesn't know exactly when he realized he had a problem with faces.
He just kept having these strange experiences, Like this one time when he ran into a woman on the train and he knew he was supposed to know who she was, but he had no idea.
And we had this conversation where I was like, how is everything?
Things are good with me.
Like I didn't mention any, there's no specifics cause I wanted to make sure, like, I didn't want it.
If you walked in and someone had no idea who you were, you would feel bad about yourself.
JJ said he also realized something was off when he'd watch movies and TV shows.
He'd sometimes completely miss a big plot point.
When my wife and I were watching a show, I'll be like, who's that guy?
And she's like, it's the main character.
He just has a hat on like it's literally Robert De Niro from the other scene.
And I was like, ooh, this is kind of strange.
All of this has led to many awkward situations and it's made JJ very aware of other people's feelings.
What happened with Missy still haunts him.
I am afraid that I might have an interaction with someone and I might not recognize them and I might not give them the attention that makes them feel good.
It's worth noting that JJ himself is easy to spot, he was born with one arm.
Walking around with one arm you are highly recognizable.
It's like how many one armed people do you meet?
Probably not a lot.
So everybody comes into the coffee shop and if you see me you probably will recognize me as that guy from the coffee shop the next day.
But I don't recognize a lot of the people who come in.
A while back, JJ told some friends about these weird moments he'd always had not recognizing people, and they asked if he'd ever heard of face blindness.
They said Oliver Sax, the science writer, had it, too.
And that's when it clicked for JJ.
So it is a little bit of this stealth disorder.
I mean, people only kind of learn they have it often when they are subjected to a whole bunch of new people they have to meet.
This is Dr. Joe DeGutis.
He's a cognitive neuroscientist and he studies facial recognition.
DeGutis teaches at Harvard Medical School and runs a lab out of the Boston VA Hospital.
We've studied how people become aware that they have this.
And often it's a little rocky.
It's a little bit like, you know, in school, they're like, I just don't pay attention or I don't care as much about people or maybe I'm a little bit on the spectrum.
They have All these attributions they can give.
The thing about people who are quote, unquote, face blind is that they're not actually blind.
They're not seeing blurs where people's faces are.
They can see eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and they can read emotions and tell whether or not someone's attractive the same way we all do.
The best estimates I could find suggest that around 3 % of the population has some form of face blindness.
Sometimes it's the result of a traumatic brain injury, but some people are just born with it.
Scientists think it could be genetic or that the network in the brain that recognizes faces just doesn't develop normally.
But for most of us, a face is the trigger that calls up all the information we know about a person.
If you see somebody's face it quickly triggers the retrieval of all this other information about them.
Like, you know, who they are, how you know them, all these other details about the person.
So it has this kind of privileged role in terms of getting all this other information out.
The clinical term for face blindness is prosopagnosia.
And agnosia is an inability to recognize something.
Prosopagnosia uses the Greek word for face, prosopo, which also happens to be the Greek word for person.
So much of who we are is wrapped up in this one part of our bodies.
I want you to stop for a second.
Think about your mom or your best friend or your kid.
You're not picturing their elbows, are you?
I mean, maybe you are because your things have happened.
My point is, for most of us, it's almost impossible to decouple who someone is from their face.
It's something that is also very special about humans.
This special thing that Digoutis is talking about here has to do with our brains.
We have a specific network that's just for recognizing faces.
And it functions unlike any other kind of cognition.
So, when I recognize a chair, I'm like, OK, it has something to sit on, has some legs, and boom, it's a chair.
You're recognizing things at this functional level, which is like, OK, how do I interact with this thing?
Usually you can do it part by part.
One of the things that we do with faces more than any other visual object is you process it as a gestalt as a whole, because we have to kind of recognize them and not just like, okay, that's a face, that's a face.
We have to be like, okay, that's my friend.
Oh, that's not, that's, oh, my, that's the person at work who I need to avoid.
And so it's like, I think that the individuation demands of faces maybe are why we kind of have this specialized system to process faces.
Frogs use sound, birds use smell and we humans love this one cluster of features sitting on top of our necks.
We are social animals and researchers think that's part of why humans developed this special recognition network in our brains because it served us.
Faces have evolved to look really different from person to person, more so than any other body part.
Scientists at UC Berkeley think that this had an evolutionary purpose.
It helped us socialize.
Not only was it beneficial to be recognizable, but also then to be able to recognize others.
Humans had to get really good at differentiating friend from foe and And we did get really good at it.
Well most of us, anyways.
D 'Goudest told me that the ability to recognize faces is a spectrum.
These are all these kinda internal things that we don't talk about, and we just assume that everybody's kinda like us, right?
And after the break, we're going to the other end of that spectrum to see what it's like for the people who never forget a face.
The super -recognizers.
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.
Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy, it's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way.
He'd also tell you this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.
Ah, really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply. See capitalone .com.
Bank, capital one N -A, member F -D -I -C.
Together T -Mobile for Business and industry leaders are innovating with our advanced 5G solutions.
For Walt Disney Studios, they transformed movie making by syncing teams in California with a remote production hub in Hawaii, enabling picture -perfect collaboration to help bring Leelo and Stitch to theaters this summer.
For PGA of America, they deliver pro -level efficiency with connected security and ticket -less entry for smoother operations, seamless transactions, and better fan experiences from gate to green.
And for Tractor Supply, they put 5G business internet to work across 2 ,200 stores cultivating AI -driven customer experiences to keep things running seamlessly inside, curbside, and countryside.
T -Mobile for Business is helping industries redefine what's possible, because with a partner that's as committed to your business as you are, there are no limits.
Discover how T -Mobile advanced 5G solutions can take your business further at tmobile .com.
The last thing you want to do when you're sick is go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, because then you're standing in a long line with a whole bunch of sick people.
everyone is sick of being sick around other people who are sick.
Amazon Pharmacy will deliver right to you fast so you can get meds without congregating among the contagious.
Healthcare just got less painful.
Amazon Pharmacy. One morning back in 1984 a little kid named Frank Vaughn was about to have a very exciting day of school.
I was nine years old and my fourth -grade class was and invited on a school field trip to the governor's office in Little Rock.
That's Governor Bill Clinton's office, to be exact.
They arranged this all in a semi -circle in cross -legged style and we waited for the man to show up.
And typical of politicians — he was around 15 minutes late — he walks out, he sits down, and he immediately turns and he snaps his fingers and points at one of his female staffers and says, You, go get my Pepsi.
And she took off on a dead run for his inner office to go grab that Pepsi.
Frank was a scrawny nine year old boy with feathery blonde hair that grew out in all directions.
Nerdy kid, always cracking jokes for attention.
Frank said that he and his classmates were so excited about meeting the governor.
There was this almost thrown -like velvet chair sitting in the middle of the room and he sits down in it and he crosses his legs and he just sorta gets himself arranged.
Frank remembers feeling in awe of this man sitting on a throne, barking out Pepsi orders.
He said the governor greeted them all and started asking them questions, and then Clinton zeroed in on Frank.
I don't know if I just have one of those faces or what, but for some reason he settled on me, and he pointed at me and said, you, what do you want to be when you grow up?
And after witnessing everything I had just seen, the only answer I could come up with was, I want to be you.
Frank said that his teacher looked horrified at this response.
He thought he was about to get in trouble like he usually did for cracking jokes.
And then the governor started laughing.
And of course, when he starts laughing, his staff joins in.
And we all joined in and it sort of released all the tension in the room.
Clinton moved on from Frank, asked some other kids questions.
He lectured them about the importance of eating their vegetables and doing their homework.
And then he sent the class on their way.
That was that. Okay, so now we're going to fast forward 13 years later, March of 1997.
Clinton is just a few months into his second term as president.
And back in his home state of Arkansas, a series of tornadoes have just destroyed the town of Arkadelphia.
25 people were killed, dozens were injured, 1 ,200 buildings were leveled.
It was a huge disaster.
Governor Mike Huckabee declares a state of emergency, FEMA is called in, and a few days after the storm settles and the rebuilding has started, President Clinton visits Arkadelphia.
It's obvious that y 'all have done a lot of work here in just a couple days.
Everybody has really pitched in.
Frank Vaughn is no longer a little boy.
He's a 6 foot 1 college student attending Wachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
That feathery blond hair is now closely cropped in the style typical of his fellow members of the Reserve Officer Training Corps.
Frank and his friends heard that the president was in town.
So they went to try and see him.
Frank said that there were hundreds of people lining the streets of Arkadelphia doing the same.
And honestly, when I saw the entourage coming up the street with the secret service agents and the governor was with him, I thought, well, he's gonna walk down the middle of the street because there's no way they're going to let him have physical contact with people.
He's the president, and I was wrong.
President Clinton, ever the people person, starts making his way into the crowd, shaking hands and taking pictures with kids.
There was a limited about a three block area that we were allowed to stand on from street to street to street, but he literally went up one block shaking hands, went back down the next block shaking hands, turned and went back up the third block.
He spent a good four hours just walking these blocks and shaking hands with people.
And then, Clinton gets to where Frank and his friends are standing.
He stopped, stuck his hand out, shook my hand and he looked at me and he leaned in and he said, do you still want to be me?
Frank said that he almost passed out.
There he was in the middle of a disaster zone in his college town, shaking hands with the president of the United States, who has just recalled a small anecdote from meeting him 13 years earlier when he was 9 years old and several feet shorter.
The first thought in my mind was I need to go to church and pray because this is like demonic.
It was just so shocking.
And listen, when I tell this story, I know it's hard to believe.
I understand that it seems almost impossible.
But if as we say back home, if I'm lying, I'm dying.
I asked Frank how he thought Clinton could possibly have remembered him.
Some people are just like that, I guess I it's little wonder that he was, you know, born in Hope, Arkansas, to a very poor family, and ended up being the most powerful man in the world.
You don't get there without talent.
People always talk about this mythical charisma Clinton possessed.
He dazzled voters on the campaign trail.
And believe it or not, there are tons of stories just like Frank's.
The comedian John Mulaney has a whole bit in his 2015 comedy special about Clinton's ability to remember people.
I want to tell you one more story before I get out of here about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton.
Malaney tells the story of this disagreement between his parents, who went to college with Clinton at Georgetown University, over whether or not Clinton would remember his mom, Ellen.
Apparently he would sometimes walk her home from the library in college.
Malaney talks about his mom dragging him to a campaign event in the 90s to see if the presidential hopeful still remembered their walks.
Here's what happens.
She was swinging me like a snowplow.
I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats.
I push past all the reporters, I push past all the photographers, we push past all the Secret Service, we land at Bill Clinton's feet.
Bill Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, hey, Ellen, because he never forgets a bitch, ever.
Remember, facial recognition abilities are on a spectrum.
researchers are pretty sure it's a normal distribution with prosopagnosics on the low end.
Most of you listening are probably somewhere in the normal range.
But there are also these people on the very high end, the super recognizers, those who never forget a face ever.
Something that the super recognizers are uniquely good at is being able to identify people, even after a lot of time has passed or they've made changes to their appearance.
This is something that Bill Clinton is very good at.
Now, we can't know for sure, and Bill Clinton has never said anything about this super -recognizing ability, but I'd venture to say that he is almost certainly a super -recognizer.
Dr. Joe DeGutis, the neuroscientist, told me that one of the ways they test facial recognition abilities is by showing people pictures of celebrities when they were kids, the before they were famous test. Oh, it's a picture of like, you know, Barack Obama when he was like two years old, and super recognizers can, like, see it.
There's this kind of cool extrapolation thing that you can be like, I can see, you know, how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.
While I was reporting the story, I came across a bunch of tests online, like the before they were famous one.
You can take them to gauge how good or bad you are at recognizing faces.
And I kept getting really good scores on them.
Suddenly everything started to make sense.
Remember earlier when I was telling Malcolm that I never forget people?
That I sometimes feel creepy after recognizing someone in line at Target?
I started to suspect that maybe I was one of these super -recognizers.
While JJ misses the plot of some movies and TV shows, I get distracted by extras.
Like, for instance, when I noticed that a passing character in a 2001 episode of Sex in the City is the guy who, spoiler alert, gets murdered in the first season of the show, White Lotus, 20 years later.
Faceline people can't find their friends on the street, well I sometimes walk past someone that I recognize as my high school friend's cousin who I've only seen pictures of.
In one of our early calls, I told DeGutes about my theory.
And being the good scientist he is, he wasn't sold right away.
I mean maybe you just like convinced yourself that you're super and you're not really super.
He needed cold, hard data, not random buzzfeed quizzes.
So I hopped on Zoom with his research assistant, Kayla Kusel, and took a three -hour battery of tests designed to definitively say whether or not I was a super recognizes.
All right, so the next one is called Face Name.
You can go ahead and click on that link.
The test started off super easy.
I was breezing through.
So they're showing me that same face from like different angles.
And I would say that I was actually a Mathe.
But things got weirder as the hours went on.
And I started to get a little stressed.
Now I'm getting nervous.
I'm like, do you want to get these right?
Which is one of the six target faces.
I had to do things like remember jobs and names of people whose faces would flash across the screen really quickly.
And at one point I was matching spiky blobs with other spiky blobs.
That one was so hard. Yeah, the Georgios is really crazy.
That, like, made me feel like I took drugs or something.
I was like, whoa, what's happening here?
Kayla and I wrapped up, and she said they'd get back to me in a few days with my results.
I was eager to hear them and unsure of what they would be.
By the end, I didn't think I did very well and I was kind of embarrassed about the whole charade.
What if I was just average?
A few days later, the verdict was in.
Digoutis and I hopped on a Zoom call to go over my results.
I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a Super Recognizer.
So I feel like, I mean, maybe when I, when you started taking the test, I was a little skeptical but I think, I think you're, you're right on.
I think this is really good.
Okay. I have to admit, I was over the moon at being called the complete package.
I said, please, go on.
Actually, looking at your results, you were perfect on two of the diagnostic tests.
Like, you didn't get a single item wrong.
You also did really well in this very impossible task where we had you try to learn 60 faces in a very short period of time and you had to recognize them out of 120 faces.
That one was so hard. Yeah.
No, you did, I mean, that's the thing.
We want to kind of push you to see what your limits are and you do have limits, but you were really quite good.
Getting my suspicions confirmed was so gratifying.
It was cool to know that I have this superpower.
Less than 2 % of people can say the same.
I had to share all of this with Malcolm.
You're like the LeBron James of facial recognition.
He did say it was a complete package, so I will also take LeBron James if you want to call me that.
I'm not gonna argue.
My experience of you is dramatically different than your experience of me.
I am forced to find alternate means of recognition.
What those of us who have impairment in this area do is we get obsessed with all the other possible cues that we can use to identify somebody.
And because they're not as reliable as the face, we're always getting into trouble.
Yeah, exactly. This is what JJ Good, the guy from the coffee shop, told me that he tries to do too.
So that's Katelyn with the beautiful chin.
This is Daniel, Leah's bald head, that's how I remember him, small bald.
So a couple months ago, I spent the morning with him at the coffee shop, and he was going around, introducing me to all of his friends and telling me how he tries to identify them here.
Oh there she is. It took me a while to recognize her, but she's got like very distinct glasses, which is useful, But she's been talking about changing her glasses, so I'm worried about that.
So he told me that he tries really hard to find these cues, but you know, it's still hard for him.
And he never wants a repeat of the Missy incident.
So his solution is to just treat every person that walks in as if they are his friend.
Everybody who comes in the door, I stare them down, because I'm like, I hope I have to see if I recognize you or know you or not.
So I'm staring at them, and they look at me and they're like, Hi?
And I'm like, hi! just in case I know them and they're like well that guy's friendly.
And that morning I was there JJ was surrounded by people.
Like you think he was the mayor or the owner of this place.
I was like did you tell all these people to show up because he knew I was coming and he was like nope.
So he really has made all these friends even in spite of the face blindness thing and I just think that's such a lovely way to live.
That is really beautiful.
JJ and Missy are great friends now despite the incident.
You can find them working and chatting at the coffee shop most days.
They get dinner every once in a while and their spouses and kids have become friends too.
But their story could have ended very differently.
Like our friendship almost ended over this and this is my nightmare.
So this person felt so bad because I was not giving her the right attention that she had a whole crisis.
Like, what did I do?
I feel so bad. And that's why I'm so weird and extra friendly.
We've all had these experiences where we don't recognize someone right away or someone doesn't recognize us.
It can be embarrassing and awkward. But the split second assumptions that we make about why, that they're aloof, or that we said something that offended them, or that maybe we just aren't memorable, might be wrong.
Faces matter, but it all comes back to what's in our heads.
Lucy? That is, you are Lucy, right?
Yeah, so that's me, yep.
I changed my shirt, but it's still me.
This has been a lot of fun.
This has been great.
Thanks Malcolm. provisionist history is produced by me, Lucy Sullivan, with Ben Natipaffi and Nina Byrd Lawrence.
Our editor is Karen Cichurgy, fact checking by Kate Furbi.
Original scoring by Luis Guerra, Scoring, Mixing, and Mastering on this episode by Echo Mountain.
Production support from Luke Lamond.
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Special thanks to Daphne Chen, Sarah Nix, and Greta Kohn, as well as the many people who shared their time and expertise with me for this episode.
Brad Duchesne, Bruno Rossion, Sarah Bait, Erica Long, Heather Sellers, Lexy Malkin, Vivek Rao, and Chris Cochrane.
If you suspect you might have a problem recognizing faces, and you want to get involved with the research they're doing at Dr. Joe Degutis' lab, go to faceblind .org.
And if you're curious about your own facial recognition abilities, visit our show notes and take the tests we have linked there.
I'm Lucy Sullivan. Don't forget, listen to Fiasco, Iran Contra, for the story of a not -so -secret scandal that captivated the United States.
Fiasco is available where you're listening right now.
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.
Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.
It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
He'd also tell you this podcast is his favorite podcast too.
Oh really? Thanks Capital One Bank guy.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply. see Capital One dot -com slash Bank Capital one and a member FDIC I Was joking with my producer Jacob the other day who's one of Pushkin's most valuable employees I hired him to be my assistant years ago in the most random manner possible I think he saw a message board posting somewhere and I interviewed him for basically 10 minutes and said go for it I made a wild gamble on someone and got incredibly lucky But let's be honest, you can't rely on getting lucky when it comes to hiring people.
Lightning's not going to strike more than once.
You need a system, and you need tools.
And that's why LinkedIn is so important.
LinkedIn is more than just a job board. They help connect you with professionals you can't find anywhere else, even people who aren't actively looking for a new job.
In a given month, over 70 % of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading jobsites.
So if you're not looking on LinkedIn, you're looking in the wrong place.
Hire professionals like a professional and post your job for free at LinkedIn .com slash Gladwell.
That's LinkedIn .com slash Gladwell to post your job for free.
Terms and conditions apply.
She's seen Encan the more times that she can count.
And she can count to 10.
She mentioned Mirabelle in every conversation.
But the moment she actually met Mirabelle...
She was speechless.
That's Pura Magia. Find yours at Walt Disney World Resort.
Five years, ten months and two days.
That's how long it took to grow the 38 inches to ride on Cali River Rapids, but the moment the wait finally ended?
That was Pura Magia.
Discover it at Walt Disney World Resort.
You're listening to an iHeart podcast.
